♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Pyle: There are all these messages of how to be embodied that are embedded inside of ballet.

Even though there is perpetually these forces from the outside trying to shape it, there were also dancers... who found some way to be in the form with pleasure and with joy and with a sense of power, because the form would have died without those people.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Cabriole.

You go cab-- Yeah, this is also a question.

Let's look at our duet.

I'm losing my balance a little bit because we're faking it.

I want to connect to you.

Hyuh!

Is that weird?

I'm, like, really under your butt.

That's so much better.

Ah!

Thank God.

It's still -- see each other.

Good.

That's really good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

♪♪ Oh, I like this chaos.

I record runs of sections in rehearsal because I feel like it brings a certain performative presence to the dancers, like knowing that they're being filmed.

I do research a lot of ballet history, but then it's like, what's happening in the room, like, with this group of people?

This is Eugénie Fiocre, and she was known for playing both male and female roles, but really famous for performing en travesti.

And she played the role of Franz in the original Coppélia.

♪♪ There's the literal legacy of her movement, sort of embedded inside of the choreography.

It wasn't just Coppélia.

There was like a 100-year period where there were no men in ballet.

The way that gender gets expressed was, like, codified in this period entirely by female dancers.

♪♪ I like not seeing the floor.

It's dark.

The way male dancers perform now has, like, the imprint of, like, how female dancers were interpreting masculinity in the late 1800s.

It's weird.

Yeah.

Do you want to try that again?

Yeah.

Let's try coming in.

♪♪ Directing and choreographing this show is like I get to play out these different parts of myself.

I started working on it just thinking about my own experiences with my gender and kind of fantasy that I would have killed it if I was in the travesty ballet era in Paris.

And like, if I had only lived in 1870.

There were all of these female dancers who performed male roles, like, all the time and, like, had a huge fan base, and, like, people that were obsessed with them.

That was really good.

That was good.

Is it possible for me to see the light for the breaking?

I just want to make sure I don't get too disoriented and actually hurt someone.

What's interesting to me about Coppélia is that it was first performed as a travesty, so the entire cast was female dancers.

"Female" dancers.

We don't know, like, how people would identify now if they were, like, living in our time.

It was sexy.

It was like the softcore porn of the 19th century.

And, like, people were going to see something beautiful and hot.

It's about a doll maker, Dr. Coppélius, who has this doll workshop.

So that was kind of like the fantasy beginning.

And I took some parts of the original Coppélia choreographic structures and kind of combined it with personal narrative.

I wanted to, like, work with a young group of all trans and nonbinary, like, highly ballet-trained people.

[ Mid-tempo piano music playing ] I love hearing the piano.

Me too.

Exciting.

What a soundtrack.

Pyle: I know.

The drama.

I'm into it, though.

We're about to have this fully lit, costumed, staged technical residency.

We don't know where the show is going to premiere or when.

We don't have a commitment.

So this showing is, like, hugely important.

[ Mid-tempo piano music plays ] [ Laughs ] I think, depending on how the showing goes, that sort of is going to forecast what's going to happen.

We don't know.

Bruce: It's not totally unheard of to see trans dancers in Newark, in New York City, but it's very rare for them to get this level of institutional support.

[ Rhythmic clanking ] The idea of dolls waking up is just a really old idea.

Salman: Dolls in ballet allow people to go to extremes as an object outside of yourself.

Assue: I start as a perfect ballerina.

I'm very much meant to please.

[ Rhythmic clanking continues ] I am definitely trying to please the Doll-Maker, always striving for a perfection that can't really be achieved.

Beardsley: When I really think about the Doll-Maker, I'm like, "Oh, this is me.

Like, this is me doing this to myself."

[ Rhythmic clanking continues ] Markovitz: I think of all of the teachers that I had when I was a kid, telling me that I was always too much.

There's this shrinking that's been imposed on me within ballet spaces my entire life.

[ Rhythmic clanking continues ] Pyle: When I'm playing the Doll-Maker, there is that, like, play inside of me.

I'm going to make this doll more beautiful by, like, forcing them into this shape.

They haven't agreed to anything that's happening to their bodies.

And the Doll-Maker is psyched about that.

[ Mid-tempo orchestral music playing ] As a young dancer, the people in power, my teachers, my choreographers, my directors, whatever they wanted from me, I would do it.

Assue: Ballet expects inhumanness from humans.

It expects perfection.

I ignored developing any parts of myself that would have been against the grain.

Markovitz: People love to watch ballet and make trina ballerinas martyrs and heroes for persevering and for starving themselves and for having blisters on their feet and all of this... [ Up-tempo orchestral music playing ] Pyle: With these dancers what I'm curious about is, what do you want out of this, and, like, how can you use this movement to support your power instead of someone else's?

Barton: This is, I think, something that a lot of dancers can relate to.

If you bring something to life, it's gonna, like, do things that maybe you didn't expect.

[ Music ends, applause ] Good job, everyone.

[ Down-tempo piano music plays ] Pyle: I need artists to work with that I feel like can understand my experience and that I can talk to.

Markovitz: The very last grand jeté we do, I, like, look back at the audience.

Or I have been doing that.

Hell yes.

Yes, absolutely.

The audience is included.

Yeah.

It's like, "Ha!"

You know what I mean?

Like, that's good.

This is where difference also, right, can come in -- like we've gone from this like other thing to, like, you guys in your expression is perfect.

Okay, cool.

It's not "for," it's like "with."

It's not for -- It's not for the audience that your ballet teachers told you it was for.

It's not easy to talk about gender, even with folks who are not cis.

♪♪ I'm not making things on a set of paper dolls that I just want to enact in space.

I'm, like, making things with people where our ideas are resonating off of each other.

I was trying to make it superangular today because I kind of...up yesterday, but... Yeah, it looks good.

Yeah, yours looks good too.

Like here.

Pyle: So it's very practical for me.

It's not a gimmick because it's like I can't make this without this group of collaborators.

Salman: All of us come to this piece with a different experience of our own gender and our own process through it.

We're all, like, in different places in our lives.

I think to start very clearly, in ballet specifically, there's extreme gendering of movement.

Assue: A male dancer, they're like stomping on the ground.

They're really, like, propelling themselves upwards, and they're allowed to show that effort.

Salman: We weren't allowed to learn these skills.

I'm not allowed to bend my legs to jump?

What does that feel like?

Female dancers are supposed to be ethereal and inhuman.

My training was very centered in ballet, which created a lot of problems in terms of gender expression.

Centering in ballet can be a very Westernized view, and it can create a lot of racism within the industry.

Salman: Gender confinement it's married to colonialism.

The femininity of men, the way that's been stripped from them.

There's a safety and a comfort zone in feminine movement for me, and I enjoy it, and I feel like it is an expression of my queerness as well.

Even though I am a man, I'm a trans man.

I am also very queer.

I don't care if you think that my flourishes are too flourishy.

The policing of gender is so subtle, so the second you feel like you're straying from that, you get scared.

[ Mid-tempo classical music plays ] This Soldier Doll as worn by Cove.

And I'm just putting the finishing touches.

I'm just giving its epaulets a little haircut.

We've definitely talked a lot about subverting these silhouettes, transforming them.

Jules starts with the big old skirt, but we designed the costumes so that when the skirt comes off, we see the underwear, the leggings, the shirt, and it becomes the silhouette of, like, a ballet boy.

[ Music intensifies ] [ Music ends ] Pyle: Cove, can I look at this with you?

Because it's like -- I need you to actually help Jules get in the jacket.

It would have been fine had that not happened.

I think it's better if you -- It was stuck.

You know, I think you can dramaturgically be like, "I want this jacket," and you're like, "Okay, you know, let me put it on you."

That's like a moment for me because, like, in my character, I'm like, opening up, like, I'm waking up more.

So that's a lovely, like, transition time.

I don't know, I'm not really giving any direction.

I'm just saying that's like a moment.

It's like this starting up of something.

Like, you break out, and then they get into what you're doing, and it's important that then you don't continue to feel alone.

Yeah.

[ Down-tempo piano music plays ] Pyle: Jules's character, the Ballerina Doll starts to kind of like wind up on their own until the Clown Doll grabs them, pulls them to the front of the stage, and takes off their tutu.

And then suddenly we see that the Ballerina Doll looks like a danseur, like a male ballet dancer, then, like, kind of shakes their hair out and, like, enters into this solo with, like, a lot of ballet boy moves that the ballerina doll would never have been allowed to do.

[ Mid-tempo orchestral music playing ] Markovitz: I think ballet is inherently queer.

The accentuation of gender, the hyperfemininity, and then the machismo and the hypermasculinity.

None of that is straight.

What straight woman walks around like this all the time, showing off the side of her neck?

Or what straight man walks around like this all the time, like, angled and direct?

It's a larger-than-life performance of gender, and that is inherently queer.

[ Music ends ] [ Cheers and applause ] What I'm into [Laughs] is ambiguity and confusion.

Like that's what I find beautiful.

Salman: We do a section that we call the gallop.

We switch costumes.

We kind of have like a gay explosion of just play and pleasure and dancing together for each other, with each other, not just as a projection of shapes.

[ Up-tempo electronic music playing ] This work is so much to do with iconic queer cultural moments, just the most ridiculous, very drag performance of yourself and gender.

And I think also just like the really human experience of not taking yourself so seriously and goofing around.

Pyle: Drag was very important to me, specifically as a young performer.

I started doing drag when I was 18.

It was the first time that I performed that I felt like affirmed in my masculinity on stage.

It wasn't a humiliating thing that had just, like, slipped out.

[ Cheers and applause ] Beardsley: There's a lot of humor in the piece, but then we get in trouble.

[ Music continues ] Markovitz: I think learning to love violence being inflicted on you is just part of the Western dance world in general.

Maybe just the broad dance world.

That violence is a form of tough love.

Being moved or adjusted.

When a teacher was slapping my thighs, like, that was attention being given to me.

I was chosen.

You build this connection, and that intimacy is manipulated.

Salman: A lot of really rampant, like fat phobia, a lot of being told, like, you're not small enough.

And there's so many forces about your body being wrong, and it's definitely very hard to sort through.

[ Music continues ] Pyle: One of my teachers was notorious for just -- I mean, it wasn't just one.

There were several of my teachers that would hit us.

Like, I had a teacher that would hit us with his cane and another teacher that would just hit us with her hands.

And I know that -- now -- that they were trying to help us, like, trying to get some clarity out of our bodies or get us to understand something, and they were so frustrated that we weren't getting it, which I see now as like they were frustrated with themselves because they were failing as teachers.

It was really terrifying as a young dancer, and humiliating.

And if you got hit by those teachers, it was because they liked you.

[ Down-tempo music plays ] We're processing it in the audience.

Cool.

I'm processing it onstage.

Yeah!

[ Laughs ] Like, "Why do I want to look at this?"

Using this theater for... Yeah, it's all for therapy.

I actually thought about that, and I was like, "How much money does this cost, and then how much does therapy cost?"

You know?

It's like, it evens out.

[ Music continues ] Markovitz: My character and Katy's character have an extended duet.

The Doll-Maker is spending extra time breaking this doll because it's maybe one of the more special ones.

[ Music ends ] And then we are left in this sort of dream state where everything is broken and the world has ended, and we kind of have to start from nothing.

[ Music resumes ] Pyle: After that duet, it's like the hopeful part of the show for me, where Jay's character, the Fairy Doll, gets up and starts to, like, really explore.

Cove and Arzu have an improvisation to kind of come together and find each other.

Salman: I love my duet with Cove.

I've never seen two transmasculine people dance together romantically on a stage.

Our bodies are invisible, and the adoration for one another is very present.

Pyle: It hit me, and I was like, "Oh, my God.

It's like the ballet guys right after the show."

Like, makeup's half on, like, and they're in love with each other.

And they've always been in love with each other.

Like, it was like so...

It just, like, hit in this totally different way where, like, I saw you and I was like, "Oh, you are like Nureyev, and your makeup is just, like, smeared, and you're, like, making out behind the stage."

And then I was crying and crying Because it's like all of this, like, hidden... You know?

It's like you can be a gay man -- well, maybe not a trans one.

You can be a gay man in ballet, but you don't see it on stage.

You definitely don't see it.

That's like the whole travesty-era thing too.

It's like there's no...way that the people that were, like, in those shows were not doing it.

Having fun.

Or, like, just queer.

[ Music continues ] It's beautiful and it's fantastic that they can get in these positions and their legs can really go up.

But it's like their legs are going up because they're so deeply attuned to each other and they're with each other and they are, like, somatically feeling through and with each other.

It's about connection.

It's not about achieving some kind of externalized thing.

That part is a lot of the hopes I have about, like, how we could approach ballet in an evolving future.

Jay and Jules sort of mirror that duet.

They do the same material, and then MJ and I do it as well.

I think it's like a little bit of a moment of forgiveness and, like, actual seeing each other.

The Doll-Maker walks off stage and then all the dolls are broken again.

[ Music continues ] It just feels more like an accurate representation of where we are.

[ Cheers and applause ] [ Cork pops ] Whoo!

Whoo!

Cheers.

Cheers.

Cheers.

To a standing ovation.

Markovitz: People love to see queer joy or they love to fetishize queer pain.

This is all my suffering.

Here, see it all on a silver platter.

You don't have to experience living it at all, but you can see everything that it is.

And then you can still see me smiling right here.

Barton: Joy just like does bring people together no matter what.

When you watch people express joy, it's hard to not feel that and, like, empathize a little bit.

Salman: We are putting our bodies out there as transgender nonconforming people, and it's a really scary time to be living in America right now.

Beardsley: I want to prove something to this art form, like the idea of an anarchy within the structure, because you can make things outside of this structure, but it loses that defiance.

With those travesty ballets, we're kind of doing something similar.

Like, we want to make big lifts and partnering happen, and we want to have those big jumps.

It doesn't matter that we don't have the training.

It doesn't matter that that's not what you're supposed to do.

We're just gonna go for it.

Olson: Is this a live art form and we keep working through it, or is this something that is dead and we are preserving it?

If ballet is something that we want to keep alive, it is something that is going to be shaped to the world that we live in today.

When I'm doing ballet, like, I feel good, I've found a way to do it that it actually feels good, which is insane to me because, like, it felt so good when I first did it, and then, like, all this other stuff got put on top of it and on top of me and, like, all these expectations.

But, like, I loved it and I feel like I've found, like, a way back.

Forward, back, sideways, up, down, like, whatever.

Like, there's all these different directions that I've had to go, and I'm still going.

But it doesn't feel impossible.

[ Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" plays ] [ Indistinct conversations ] ♪ Just a perfect day ♪ ♪ Drink sangria in the park ♪ ♪ And then later when it gets dark ♪ I'll go with.

I'll go with you.

I'll go with you guys.

That's fine.

Oh, it's such a perfect day ♪ I'm glad I spent it with you ♪ ♪ Oh, such a perfect day ♪ ♪ You just keep me hanging on ♪ ♪ You just keep me hanging on ♪